Here's my name, Steven Kehlet, using the English mode of Tolkien's Tengwar alphabet. In
the Silmarillion (and probably numerous other places), Tolkien describes how Feanor
created this alphabet intended to be written with a pen or a brush, thus its flowing,
rounded appearance (contrast this with the Dwarven runic alphabet, with its sharp edges,
intended to be chiseled into stone). It is a phonetic alphabet suitable for use with any
language; one merely has to define a "mode" for use with a particular language that
defines what letters represent what sounds. While several of the known modes (Quenya,
Sindarin, and English) have similar sounds for similar letters, other modes such as the
Black Speech of Mordor (inscribed on the One Ring) are very different. Reading and
writing using this alphabet thus becomes an effort of sounding out the words. One might
correctly conclude then that local accents could very much change the way otherwise
identical text is written. In the most common modes the letters represent consonants, and
vowel sounds are represented by the accents, or "tehtar", placed above, below, or inside
the consonants. And depending on the mode, the tehtar either indicate that the vowel
sound should be read before or after the indicated consonant (the English mode states
before, so you read in a "downward" fashion, letter to letter) :-). Later modes, such as
the Mode of Beleriand (the famous example being the riddle inscription surrounding the
gates of Moria), eliminated the tehtar and simply used more letters to represent vowel
sounds.

Naturally, there is a veritable wealth of information out there on the Tengwar, some sites
are more fanatical than others. One very beautiful site is Amanye Tenceli, which has an excellent
section: "The Tengwar of Feanor". An excellent site describing the Tengwar, with tables
on its various modes, is at Dan Smith's Tengwar
Page. You can get several variants of Tengwar TrueType fonts at Dan Smith's Fantasy Fonts. The
particular font I used above is called "Tengwar Parmaite" by its author, which I like the
best, and is available at: Tengwar
Parmaite. You need to read the accompanying documentation to see what keystrokes to
hit to generate what letters; for example, Steven Kehlet is typed as: 81rR$5R zjR1R.

Armed with the Tengwar Charts for
English, it then becomes possible to read the inscriptions at the beginning of every
Tolkien book. Here is my interpretation of the text at the bottom of the title pages of
FOTR, TTT, and ROTK: The Westmarch by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: herein is set forth
the history of the war of the Ring and the return of the king as seen by the hobbits.
Here also is my interpretation of the text found in the Silmarillion: The tale of the
first age when Morgoth dwelt in Middle Earth and the elves made war upon him for the
recovery of the Silmarils. To which are appended the downfall of Numenor and the history
of the Ring of Power and the Third Age on which these tales come to their ends.

Visitor comments

On Thu Apr 24th 2003, 4:59pm, fzachman posted:

I dunno when you had enough time to find all that out, but that's pretty
cool. I knew Tolkein originally created his worlds as an aside to creating
a new language, as he was a big fan of languages. But I never knew the
details of the language(s) he created. Pretty interesting stuff.

On Thu Apr 24th 2003, 5:02pm, will posted:

I know that I've been looking at this stuff, and some other stuff to help
me out on the character I'm creating for Forest DnD campaign. I'm thinking
about actually learning some of Tolkein's Elvish so that I can use some in
game. I know that its not the same as Forgotton Realms Elvish, but there
really isn't a real full forgotton realms elvish to play with.

On Thu Apr 24th 2003, 9:42pm, Steve Kehlet posted:

It's been a bit of a hobby for a number of years. The beautiful script has
intrigued me ever since I first read Lotr. But this sort of thing actually
goes back even further--I was the guy that knew the simple, letter for
letter runic alphabet in Ultima by heart (which I didn't know at the time
was actually ripped directly from the Hobbit), and figured out how to
replace the standard ascii font in my dot matrix printer to print out any
text document using Ultima runes! :-)

As far as Tolkien's universe, there's something compelling about it: full
of deeds both wondrous and terrible, always with an undertone of loss and
longing for what could have been. And no matter how much you dig into
Middle Earth's history, there's always one more tale just beyond what you
were looking for, providing a sense of infinite depth.

On Thu Apr 24th 2003, 9:53pm, Steve Kehlet posted:

The best way to learn about Tolkien's elves is to read the Silmarillion, if
you haven't already. It is not another Lotr--it is really two books in
one: one about the elves, and in particular one of the exiled lines of the
high elves (those who dwelt in Valinor with the Valar, the
caretakers/demigods of Middle Earth); and the other book about the fall of
the Numenor, and its race of supermen (from which Aragorn descended). It's
kind of an anthology of short stories, which all tie together to some
degree. The elves' struggle against Morgoth, the rogue Vala, to reclaim
the Silmarils is possibly even more powerful than the Lotr's story of the
destruction of the One Ring.

On Fri Apr 25th 2003, 9:06am, fzachman posted:

Actually Will, there is an elvish alphabet for Forgotten Realms. I can
give you a copy if you want. And Steve, I also knew the Tolkein runic
alphabet. Me and my friends used to write notes to each other using it.
I've all but forgotten it now though. Hehe. We're such geeks!

On Fri Apr 25th 2003, 10:52am, will posted:

Alphabet is not the problem, Language is :( there is no real true Elvish
for forgotton realms, the words are all made up on the spot by the authors,
with the only real requirement being that it sound somewhat elvish. If I'm
going to actually use something, i'd like for it to have some rules, and
grammar behind it.

On Fri Apr 25th 2003, 6:50pm, mkindig posted:

I, too, knew the Runic alphabet. I used to play D&D with friends, in high
school. One friend, named Grant, and I used to supplement the games with
scrolls with Runic writing on it -- replete with wax seals and logos. And,
much like Forest, I have seem to forgotten most of it. I'm sure it would
come back to me if I used it.
Seems like there are a lot of "closet" D&D players here. Would be fun to
have a weekend game. (Better hurry BEFORE Steve's genetic progeny
arrives!)
Thanks for the memories...
Michael

On Fri Apr 25th 2003, 7:55pm, Steve Kehlet posted:

Forest and Michael, you're right! We are total geeks. I too used to write
notes in class using the "secret code", thinking we were so clever. How's
this for geeky?? :-)

!

I made those tiny gif images a few years ago. I just took a look around
now and there are a ton of places with ultima rune truetype fonts out
there. Cool, added them to my collection. *Cackle* Check this out for
some humor value...

On Fri Apr 25th 2003, 8:51pm, Steve Kehlet posted:

Hey Will, check out this cheesy name
generator I picked up a little while back. I found it at the Isengard Mud site, an offspring of
Mordor, a Mud I played quite a bit in college. I'm actually pretty
surprised Isengard is still around, given it's, well, text-based and
graphical mmorpgs are so popular these days. Anyways, look at the
javascript source, it's quite primitive but actually quite effective in
generating a decent name after a few attempts. My point is elvish names
are just mashings of words (Elbereth: El-bereth, "star-queen") so maybe
this technique might be of some inspiration.

If names aren't what you were thinking of, there's a wealth of information
out there on Quenya and Sindarin, the two elvish languages. One site I
stumbled across recently that you might be interested in is Tolkien's Languages in
the Fotr Movie. They've analyzed the dialog used in the movie and have
interpretations and translations. Really neat stuff.

On Thu Jun 19th 2003, 7:10am, Timotu posted:

Just to add my two cents worth to the mention of the inscription on the
title page of the Lord of the Rings books, the first half of the
inscription is written at the top of the title page using Cirth runes. The
part written in Tengwar is only the end of the inscription.

On Thu Jun 19th 2003, 9:52am, Steve Kehlet posted:

Hmm, interesting. I think I managed to translate it a long time ago.
Surprisingly, given my liking of the simpler Hobbit/Ultima alphabet, the
cirth runes never fascinated me quite as much as the Tengwar. Do you
happen to have a translation?

On Fri Jan 27th 2006, 8:45pm, Towyn posted:

The "Ultima" and "Hobbit" runes described above are
actually mostly real Norse runes. One of J.R.R. Tolkien's great strengths
was that he had a vast understanding of the lore and history of humanity,
which he used very effectively to add depth to his great works.

On Sun Apr 23rd 2006, 5:55pm, charlie aponte F.L. posted:

Hello
I want the name of my two children writen in tenwar for a tatoo how can i
find it. VLADIMIR and ASHLEY MARIE.

On Mon Apr 24th 2006, 10:25am, Steve Kehlet posted:

There's a great online Tengwar generator at
http://www.tengwar.art.pl/tengwar/ott/start.php?l=en . Enter your phrase
phonetically, then choose output format PNG. That'll give you a .png image
which you can print out, put on a web page, or.. whatever.

On Fri Jun 2nd 2006, 11:32am, Visitor posted:

you suck

On Fri Jun 2nd 2006, 11:33am, Visitor posted:

you suck

On Fri Jun 2nd 2006, 11:33am, Visitor posted:

On Fri Jun 2nd 2006, 11:33am, Visitor posted:

On Fri Jun 2nd 2006, 12:00pm, Steve Kehlet posted:

Cute. Thank you for stopping by.

On Sat Nov 11th 2006, 5:49pm, Visitor posted:

would it be possible for you to write something out for me in tengwar? my
email is downhilleuphoria@yahoo.com

On Sat Nov 11th 2006, 5:49pm, Visitor posted:

would it be possible for you to write something out for me in tengwar? my
email is downhilleuphoria@yahoo.com

On Sat Nov 11th 2006, 5:49pm, Visitor posted:

would it be possible for you to write something out for me in tengwar? my
email is downhilleuphoria@yahoo.com

On Mon Nov 13th 2006, 12:39pm, Steve Kehlet posted:

Visitor: it's easy to do it yourself. Go to
http://www.tengwar.art.pl/tengwar/ott/start.php?l=en , type something in
the top box, click the PNG button, then Transcribe.

On Fri Feb 9th 2007, 12:42pm, niels bernving posted:

On Fri Sep 7th 2007, 1:49am, Visitor posted:

Hi I'm not allowed to give my name out to any one on the internet but I was
wondering how can I get each elvish letter from Tolkien translated to
English?

Yours Sincerely,
Unknown.

On Thu Sep 27th 2007, 11:10am, Steve Kehlet posted:

Visitor: the tengwar letters are simply a phonetic representation of spoken
language. It's not a one-for-one letter swap. As you write, you decide
which letters most closely represent the sounds you're making. then you
write them down. There are defined rules for several languages, including
Quenya, Sindarin, English, and the Black Speech of Mordor specifying what
tengwar represent what sounds. So if you're trying to read some tengwar
you've found, just find a tengwar alphabet guide (like this one, for
English: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tengwar_eng.htm), figure out what
sounds each tengwar represent, then start speaking them aloud. That's how
I figured out what the stuff on the title page of all the LoTR books said.

On Fri Feb 22nd 2008, 11:49am, Visitor posted:

Hi im looking at gettin a tattoo of my fiance's name ive looked at many
sites on how to do Tengwar yourself but i cant seem to get the hang of it
and was just wondering if you was able to write his name for me? its Kirk
my email is cookie_hampster@hotmail.com
manys thanks

On Mon Feb 25th 2008, 11:02am, Steve Kehlet posted:

A tengwar tattoo of "Kirk"? I'd really hate to give you the
wrong transcription for something so permanent :-). If you're serious I'd
suggest just going to http://www.tengwar.art.pl/tengwar/ott/start.php?l=en,
typing in Kirk in the top box, selecting output format PNG, then hitting
Transcribe. What it comes up with makes sense to me: "K-ir-K".
Or you might just get the "K"-sounding tengwa, which looks like a
"q" with a bar on top. You might get fewer Tolkien scholars
stopping you in the street with criticisms or corrections.

On Tue Feb 26th 2008, 1:18pm, Visitor posted:

ok thank you very much i put in his name and sure name and even if its
wrong i no wot its says and i liek the look of it but thank you very
much
Edele

On Sat Apr 5th 2008, 2:39am, fééanoor posted:

st michal- hmmmm talk-ien

On Fri Apr 11th 2008, 6:44pm, Steve Kehlet posted:

Yes right, of course.

On Sun May 18th 2008, 6:51pm, Courtney posted:

all i want is my name courtney sent to my e-mail adress so i can get it
tatted on me!
if you could do this it would be greatly appericated!!!
courtneymontiel@yahoo.com
one again thank you and i appericate it very very much!!!

On Sun May 18th 2008, 6:51pm, Courtney posted:

all i want is my name courtney sent to my e-mail adress so i can get it
tatted on me!
if you could do this it would be greatly appericated!!!
courtneymontiel@yahoo.com
one again thank you and i appericate it very very much!!!

On Sun Jul 27th 2008, 3:43pm, Visitor posted:

hi could somebody show me what my name would look like in Tengwar? My name
is daniel

On Wed Aug 20th 2008, 7:16pm, Visitor posted:

Hi there,

I was wandering if you could tell me what my name would look like in
tengwar? Its Michael.

Many thanks

On Fri Oct 3rd 2008, 5:42pm, Visitor posted:

hi i was wondering if you could tell me what my name would look like in
tengwar ? my name is Daniel . i have used the transcriber in the link that
you said , but how do i know if its real ?

many thanks Dan

On Fri Jul 24th 2009, 11:10pm, Visitor posted:

baranduin in tengwar??

On Fri Jul 24th 2009, 11:10pm, Visitor posted:

baranduin in tengwar??

On Sun Sep 6th 2009, 12:32pm, Visitor posted:

Niklas Natalie

On Sun Oct 25th 2009, 6:46pm, Visitor posted:

I used the transcriber you suggest, but I was looking for tengwar in
italics. It's much more sweeping and Elf-like! Any links for that?

On Mon Feb 7th 2011, 6:18pm, Alexis posted:

Try this site guys. It proved to be quite helpfull for me..
http://derhobbit-film.de/rune_generator.shtml